After all the tension caused by serious topics of the past two blogs around language, identity, ideology, history, heritage, I feel the urge to lighten up things a bit. There must be something that has driven me down this serious road. When I look back, it was pretty much a joy ride on a bumpy road, quite a bumpy French road I must say, or was I a bad jerky driver, fumbling with my gears, while steering up the rungs of the social ladder?
With a foot fracture that takes time to heal, I'm sitting here comfortably in my living room with my feet up, looking at the dirty floor and wondering which of my kids' turn it is to vacuum clean and dust the house this weekend. Yes, as Matt reminded me, I've come a long way. Never mind the dirt and the dust, we are comfortably settled in a French suburb house with our two adorable (French? Indian? American?) children.
The French adventure started when I had earned the French Government Scholarship that was lavished on me to do a Master's in French, in Grenoble. I already had an University teaching position in Chennai, into which I could not quite settle. I dreaded going to work in a saree, for one. Then, I was only twenty-two and I hadn't seen the world yet. Whoever wants to feel settled at that age ? If I had just stayed on in that job, I would have probably been married off to some nice guy. It's nice to be optimistic. Arranged marriages don't always end in disasters after all, not any more than the so-called love-cum-arranged marriages of Meetic or e-Darling or the purely all-flame love marriages, the 'veritable coup de foudre'!
Coming to think of it, there is a considerable amount of comfort in an arranged marriage. First, the entire family approves of the union, parents, grand-parents, uncles, aunts, sisters, brothers and all. It is a family affair. A reasonable affair in keeping with caste, creed and traditions. The married couple gets everybody's blessings and then hopes to live happily ever after, like anybody else. A nice fairy tale too ! The other comfort comes from skimming through the catalogues with pictures of groovy and less groovy guys who can be easily approached by the family. Choose the most gorgeous guy with the fattest pay and assets, in the grooviest place in the world and sail away babe ! Let your parents figure out if they can afford this nice big catch. If you can overlook the small discomfort of the dowry that your parents will have to go through, it's all yours.
I guess I was just too proud for that. I wanted things to happen my way. I love to be behind the wheel. Peaceful sailing is nice. But I seem to be drawn towards the excitement of a rough roller-coaster ride. Here I was set off to France, yelling, " yippie ! the world is mine!" It was a year of fun, a month in Paris and then the year in Grenoble, with enough money to backpack to a few European cities. With enough time to goof around with this International get-together of students from all over the world. A party year it was. I wished this year never to end. But it ended. And I also had enough time to fall in love. Fall I did. A nice long dreamy dizzy free fall. Until one day, I woke up, next to my husband, on a mattress on the floor, with a garden table and chairs in a tiny little apartment in another French suburb. Now what ?
As soon as we had moved in, people were looking me up and down with a look of silent shock. Though the first time you cannot see it, the pattern ultimately falls into place. It took almost twenty years for me to pin down this expression on their faces. Though you may say I'm a slow learner, I must add that I do feel like a mentalist now. You can pin down this expression, only if you have travelled a bit and if you see the world from behind this gorgeous copper skin I can flaunt. I can now see at the passport check points what awaits me in the country that lies behind. Just a glance. Just that small suspicion. A resentment betrayed by a twitch ever so slight and yet so frequent that it cannot be missed anymore. After a lifetime of experience, each cell in my body warns me of that tiny detail that betrays them and yells, "Steer clear, honey ! rocky shore!" Most of these entries I made into new territories were with my blond husband beside me with an identitical French passport. Needless to say that the officers greeted him differently in some countries, only in some. Grown out of doubt somewhere down the line, I can now write with a conviction that comes from patient learning and observation. Back to our story.
The apartment complex was very pompously called, 'Résidence Le Parc'. Right in the centre of a small town, a very small town of mostly middle class workers in the paper mills and other small industries around. But there were other trades thriving, as best they could, catering to the employees of the mills. There was a doctor in our building and his clinic on the ground floor, a plumber, an American pastor, a cleaning woman, who was also the janitor of 'Résidence Le Parc' and the others were mostly workers from the surrounding mills.
A group of women would gather around the benches in the park, behind the buildings to gossip atleast three to four times a day. Some of them used to gather at the entrance to the building very often and sigh to one another, when I passed them by : "This place is not what it used to be !" This was a caste of people who couldn't do with just a subtle twitch. They had to drive it home. This, from some explanation I got from friends, meant that they did not like nor did they expect a coloured person to be in their Résidence le Parc, one day. They had after all bought their flats with the sweat of their brow. They had moved into the town center, upgraded their existence by even living next door to a doctor! And here I come ! A third world immigrant! Spoiling all the fun. Didn't these immigrants get partial rent waivers when they went to the 'tours' (ghettos) at the edge of the town? That's where they were expected to live ! One of these women even suggested that I get some information about that. These were the years when nobody from these castes greeted me and they all looked at me suspiciously when I was getting warm hand shakes from that doctor and the pastor, wondering what that doctor and the pastor could have to do with that 'café au lait' immigrant.
I still wonder how much worse it can be, if I were to be married to another 'cafe latte' like me. My husband is white. The typical Caucasian. A blond six-footer with blue eyes. To some people in France, this is God himself (he actually enjoys this treatment in many parts of the world and in India too! And I have to keep knocking him back to the ground so often, which may explain why he went bald this poor chap!) They seem to crave so much for blondness in this part of the world, that understandably it results in dumbness, if blonds fall into the trap and let themselves into believing that blond is beautiful to the point of reaching the blissful void.The 'Black is beautiful' slogan is a revengeful claim, but 'blond is beautiful' is unfortunately very often a self-satisfied claim of having reached The Ultimate, when it comes to beauty and vanity in France. Some are born blonds and many become blonds and some have blondness thrust upon them. They can hardly be blamed for this, though I am skeptical about those who choose to become blonds. God save those stars who have blondness thrust upon them! Whatever!
So, many of them wondered why this God (my husband) would stoop so low to the rung of a third world immigrant. Some even drove it back home in different ways. In a grade list, they rated the blond-haired, bleu-eyed, six-footer at the top and the cafe latte, somewhere above the blacks way down on that list, somewhere beneath the fairer skins. It's easy kinder-garten calculation after all. What could this blond God possibly find in me? This led on to the conjecture that he was only keeping me until his next catch. Some said that I must be so good at those bestial details that draw us closer to animals, if you know what I mean. The darker your skin, the closer to animals, we are ! That is again another easy nursery rime. After all, I had kept my maiden name, so, it must be a lie ! They're not married! They're just having a good time ! Talking about good times....
Our son was born. We had furnished our flat to keep up the standards of the 'Résidence Le Parc.' We needed a second car. We are not car fans, though we love to drive around on bumpy roads! With our family growing, we thought we'll buy a nice big family van and the tiny Peugeot 205 was really not big enough to hold the stroller, the tricycle, the toys and the many number of bags, with diapers, baby food, sterilisers and what not. So, one day we came back home after a nice long drive and parked our new second-hand van in the parking lot of the 'Résidence Le Parc.' And something new happened from that day onwards. All these women and some men too, started greeting me with a strange mixture of respect and resentment, with the austere 'Bonjour'! Good times hey !
Then our daughter was born. We had to move into a bigger house. Our new house was under construction in the poshest neighbourhood of that small town, of a very small town. When the news went around, the same women and many more men and women joined in and started greeting me with quite some respect and even some reverence with the austere, 'Bonjour Madame!'
Then we moved into our new house. I must admit we designed and built a house that stood out like a sore thumb in this small town, a very small town. I still don't know why we could not see that this house just didn't fit in that location. We were the house owners of this fabulous American styled house. People came around just to take glimpses of our outstanding house, though we didn't mean it to be so bling bling. Now the austere greetings were upgraded to wide smiles coming our way, begging for recognition, 'Bonjour Madame Camou (though this is my husband's name, it simply doesn't sink into the average French brain that you can be married and keep your name and identity). Comment allez-vous? J'espère que... bla bla bla...' My children in elemantary school now, came back home thinking they were some royal blood, with all the good humour going around them, about being the residents of that posh house.
And then I got through one of the competitive exams and became a Professor. As much as the lack of greetings can be disgusting, this new cringing attitude towards us was nauseating. The whole town knew us now. Thanks to the walls of this beautiful house. That's not hard, given the scope in this town! But yet, we were the zamindars, les notables, the Lords.
And then we made our first trip to America. And then the second trip to America. Though, we had travelled maybe four or five times to India, during our stay in that small flat, in these people's eyes, that didn't seem to count as much as our trip to the States. Our children were dangerously growing up believing they were Lords. It had to stop. Other Lords of the town were now willing to let us into their realm. Here was a caste system without a name.
Looking back, I know I have broken away from the comfort zones of my country, my caste, my creed, my family. These were my protective confines. Breaking away meant a roller coaster ride in which everything had to be sorted out from scratch. Building our house was in a way building new protective boundaries and holding up a new banner with an unnamed caste. Here was a new caste system which went hand in hand with cars and wealth. Wasn't it the same thing in India, built up over many generations with not so duck-backed boundaries, as it is claimed to be? The endogamic caste system in India is as much a myth as is the purity of French blood. There may be people out there dumb enough to believe in this. But I just need to take a look at myself in the mirror to know that I was not born out of pure blood, nor a pure caste. I am mixed. So are the French. So is everybody. Even the blonds.
Back home, we had neighbours who had become doctors and engineers, though they were born into lower castes. Positive discrimination drove so many of us out of the protective frontiers of our comfort zones to explore the world with all its powers to frighten us. We have built our new castes or bought them with the money we earned, stayed our grounds, created new boundaries and blurred old ones. Our new castes can be measured, counted and rated. Yet, they have no names. Naming them would be politically incorrect. But is a rose, any less a rose, when it has no name and a shorter span of life?
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